tintinn16

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i miss them

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FRANCISCO MORALES | TRIPLE FRONTIER

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Pedro as General Acacius from the Gladiator II special

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Tonight you belong to me, chapter 6

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. Time's up.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 Additional 🚨: self-harm, suicidal thoughts

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange bedroom besties 🧡 Thank you for your patience, I appreciate you all SO DAMN MUCH. See you in the end note 🧡 @frannyzooey you're a warrior and I'll go all gothic on you: I will keep loving you long after I'm dead, long after I'm gone, long after love ceases to exist. Thank you for your invaluable help 🧡

Word count: 14.5k

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Chapter 6: Never Let Me Go

Benny bends forward with a huff, and drops the bulky card box he’s carrying next to a pyramid of similar boxes, all labelled “LIVING-ROOM” in black Sharpie. It hits the hardwood floor with a loud thud that resonates in the empty room. 

“Fuck me, that’s heavy. Okay. I think that was the last one,” he pants, lifting his baseball cap and wiping his sweat-damp forehead on his shoulder.

“That went fast,” William observes. His brother whips around to face him with a scowl. 

“That’s because you took the bags labelled ‘clothes’ and you let me haul up all those fucking books! Fish, what the fuck do you have so many books for, man?” he adds, as Frankie steps into the room, two solid oak planks propped over his shoulder.

“To read,” Frankie answers absent-mindedly, setting down the wood against a wall.

Silence falls over the small square room as the two brothers exchange another wary glance. Frankie doesn’t notice. He hasn’t noticed much since morning, too focused on the task at hand, too caught up in his head. 

“What’s this for?” Will asks patiently, pointing at the wood. 

“Shelves. For the books. I left the old ones to Lupe.”

“You mean there’s more books over there?” Benny snarls. Will glowers at him, and the younger man pouts, adding in a softer tone, “You know you could save yourself some money and trouble and get shelves from Ikea or somethin’.” 

“Nah, I don’t like these things, they’re full of solvents. You’re just breathing toxic shit. Don’t want that for my kid.”

Don’t want that for Lee. 

Frankie straightens up and takes a quick look around him. The room is small, yes, but luminous. Clean, and well ventilated, which had been selling arguments. The house itself is no frill, a bit soulless even, but functional. There’s a separate dining-room he plans on converting into a playroom for Lua. Maybe a TV room or an office, when she’s older. The kitchen came equipped and is large enough for a table and four chairs. There are two bedrooms upstairs and, most importantly, a spacious basement where he can work wood. 

The front lawn is fine, but the backyard will require a lot of work, the previous owners seemingly having had no interest in tending to it. 

It’s good enough for his kid and him, but will it be good enough for you? 

He assumes you could afford two houses like this one with what you make in a year. He assumes you live downtown, in one of those lanky glass towers that cast their haughty shadow over the harbor. 

He assumes you hate it. 

And maybe you hate it enough to break your cage open and leave. Maybe someday soon, your Russian literature will sit next to his engineering books on those shelves he’s going to build for you. 

“You got more wood like this at the other house?” 

Will’s voice brings him back to the square room. To all the things that remain to be done. To the urgent necessity of furnishing the house so it’s habitable for a two-year-old. A tiny bed with tiny linens, rainbows, stars and suns. Rails to secure the stairs, a shower curtain, drapes and rugs. Safety outlet plug covers. 

And the question he has yet to ask you. 

“Yea, in the garage. But I can take care of it later.”

“No, let’s get to it, buddy. We can wrap up everything today so you don’t have to go back.”

Benny swipes the hem of his Kiss t-shirt over his face and nods, walking toward the front door. Will’s gaze follows his brother’s tall silhouette before it returns to Frankie, steely eyes of blue openly trained on his face. 

The allusion is not lost on Frankie. This house is a mere couple of blocks away from the one he shared with Lupe. He’s not keen on the idea. If it was up to him, if he moved through life alone, he would have already crossed three or four state lines, at the very least. Head north, and maybe west. Closer to his sister. 

But he’s not alone. He’s a father. Living nearby makes the everyday logistics of co-parenting that much easier. Daycare, then school. Family doctor, friends and sleepovers. Lua will be able to walk between her two parents’ homes. That’s not exactly a functioning family, but for now, it’s the best he can provide.  

“I’m doing what I can, here, you know?” Frankie murmurs, dipping his head under the brim of his hat.

“I know. I know you’re doing what’s best for them.”

Will runs a palm over his nape and winces, hand flying to his left flank. 

Frankie has noticed him clutching his side every so often. He can’t tell if it’s pain or remembrance. He’s never encountered anyone with the Millers' capacity to endure physical injuries. Only he knows first hand that guilt-tainted wounds are another deal entirely. 

“You okay there, man?” Frankie frowns.

“Oh yeah. Golden.”

“We can take a break. Finish after lunch. There’s beer in the fridge and–”

“Let’s get to it, Fish,” Will insists, patting Frankie’s arm as he walks past him.

Frankie firmly believes that no one over thirty should ever, under any circumstance, ask their friends to help them move. Which resulted in him calling the Millers on very short notice. He had decided early on to leave all shared belongings to Lupe, thus hadn’t anticipated there would be so many things left to move. It seems to him that, until three years ago, his entire life could fit in a single rucksack.  

When he saw the two brothers stepping out of Will’s truck this morning, it felt as if a formidable weight had been lifted off his chest. He’d woken at the crack of dawn, setting all the bags and boxes on the front lawn, to spare Lupe the ordeal of having his friends trampling all over her carpet. Not that she’d said anything. She’d gotten up shortly after him, preparing a large pot of coffee, placing a fresh box of donuts on the kitchen table.

“You’re a good man, Francisco,” she’d told him back in early April, when he’d asked her if he should move out, if she wanted him to. “And you’re always going to be the father of my child. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. We’re just not a good match, I guess. You know that, right?”

“I know,” he’d said, holding her gaze. “I just– I want you to know I’m sorry. And grateful. I’m grateful for you, Lupe.”

She hadn’t answered. Lupe was made of heavy silences and sharp thoughts. A perceptive gaze in a movie star's face. She’d pushed away from the kitchen counter, and reached out for his shoulder, giving him a strong squeeze. A gesture that meant, you’ll be alright.

He’ll be alright. That much he knows. When he wakes up every morning between sheets that bear your luminous scent, when your mug is drying on the dish rack next to his and when your clothes are hanging in the closet next to his clothes. Then he’ll be alright.

He cannot wait for you to meet his kid. It’s a childlike anticipation, a fantasy, really. The only thought that keeps him going. That enables him to ward off the crippling dread spreading black and murky inside of him. 

When you came back to him with that fresh wound on your forehead, a clock got set off in the back of his head. A distant ticking, at first, stifled by what you hadn’t yet extinguished of his rage and regrets. But every week since, the timer has been growing louder, pulsating faster in his temple like a swollen vein, ominous, threatening, he needs to get you out of there. Out of there, out of your cage, away from this man. 

This pain rooted in his chest whenever he thinks of you, that piercing ache has become a hindrance, he can’t keep a clear mind, that one obsessive thought obstructing everything else, he needs to get you out of there. Keep you by his side, where he can make sure you’re safe. 

Every Saturday morning, when he parts from you, reluctant and exhausted, the fear that you’ll get caught cheating clenches his hands into vengeful fists. 

Cheating is a filthy fucking word that feels all kinds of wrong to describe what you share and everything you mean to him. Bitterly, he remembers how he tried to scare you off, that first night at the motel. Everything he’s done to keep you at arm’s length, letting you believe he belonged to another woman. How he failed and fell hard, beyond the point of no return, how he was doomed to fail from the very first look you exchanged. 

How does he fix it, now? Does he step into the motel next Friday and flat-out ask you to move in with him? No preamble, no casual dating, none of that bullshit? Would you get scared? Would you trust him? Would you laugh in his face, reject what he’s offering? Does he get you into the truck and drive away with you into the sunset, like he’s dreamed of doing since the first time he took you for a ride, five months ago? 

Will you forgive him? You’ve trusted him so far. Can he push it a little further?  

How much more time can he afford to waste, before your safety is seriously at stake? 

He needs to get you out of there.

—

There’s a latch on the left side of the window frame, concealed in the sleek aluminum panel. It’s difficult to find, to say the least. Purposely, you suppose. 

The pads of your fingers run over the cool metal until you feel a tiny groove in the flat surface. With a satisfied hum, you slide a fingernail into the ridge and lever it up. It’s thin and sharp and it bites into the soft flesh of your thumb. 

“How many times do I have to tell you not to open the windows?” Adrian’s voice comes in from behind you, and you whip around like a cartoon thief caught red-handed, catching your balance with the flat of your palm on the glass panel. “There’s no need for it. And It messes up the thermostat.”

His tone is reprimanding. It makes your toes curl.

He’s been gone the entire weekend. Since Friday morning, as far as you can tell. His bespoke, royal-blue suit looks slept in. It probably is. Somehow, even when you’d been buzzing with gin and numbed out on pills, you’ve always maintained enough clarity to notice these kinds of details. To pay attention to him. 

Tonight, you’re entirely sober. Like you’ve been for weeks. And you have no trouble seeing the white collar of his shirt smeared with lipstick, the faintest trace of a flaming red pigment. You nearly scoff at the cliché. The flap house motel, the lipstick stain. So much for 2010 Bay Citizen’s power couple.

There’s an unkept air to his general demeanor. The dip of his collarbone peeks out from his unbuttoned shirt, his pale skin is flushed. His hair tousled, fairer without the matting pomade he normally applies to sleek it back, loose strands falling on his forehead, casting a shadow over his brow. 

He looks different. A younger, rougher version of himself. He looks handsome. It strikes you, with a sense of guilt to the realisation, like something you’re supposed to know but forgot everything about. 

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“So you thought you’d open the window?” he asks flatly, breaking eye contact to take off his jacket and drape it over the Stark chair.

“I need fresh air. Real air. It’s too stuffy in here,” you mumble. You sound like a scolded teenager. You hate it. 

“Is that literal?” he snarls, throwing you a glance over his shoulder, sliding his undone tie off his neck. 

You sink your teeth into your cheek, strong enough to taste blood. You pivot toward the window. The soft pad of your thumb finds the latch and you swiftly lift it, ignoring the bite of the metal. The window frame cracks open. The dried out joints part with a crunching sound. 

It’s a mundane sequence of actions. Insignificant, inconsequential. Nothing like following a stranger to a dark, deserted parking lot behind a bar. But inside you, the wild creature stirs, awakened by what you’ve set in motion. You don’t know it yet. But it’s too late to back down. 

A briny evening draft rushes in, carrying the bustling city’s noises on its tail, distant traffic, siren’s wails, fracturing the seal of your glass cage. 

When you turn back to face him, a smirk is forming on Adrian’s thin lips, one that can only be interpreted as an expression of condescension for your poor attempt at rebellion. 

The notion riles you up. 

“Actually, it’s not stuffy, it’s suffocating. But you wouldn’t know, you haven’t been here in three days.”

The air stills between you. It’s tangible, ironically, despite the open window. His expression freezes mid-smirk, and your eyes quickly scan his face. That long ingrained apprehension in the back of your brain, desperately, frantically trying to set off all the alarms, but something within you won’t let it. Something new. Something brazen.

Adrian straightens up. For a fleeting second, his expression shifts, unclear, undecided, as though he’s still making up his mind on how to deal with you.

And then, his face settles. 

“Well, that’s rich, coming from the woman who’s been deserting her home every Friday night for over half a year.” His lips purse in disdain around the word woman. 

It’s rage. That something new and brazen inside you is rage. It’s white-hot, and it’s growing fast, too fast for you to even try to contain it. It fills up your brain, smothering your inner voice and muffling the blaring alarms, overpowering everything else. You can feel it swell inside your chest, powered by the wild creature between your lungs. It takes up so much space between your rib cage, you can barely breathe, and yet you embrace the sensation. It’s not discomfort. It’s strength.  

“Another thing you wouldn’t know, since you’re out all night playing poker.” In turn, you scoff at the word, at the lie, at the hypocrisy of this long-overdue squaring up.

His eyes narrow on your face before he delivers the next blow.

“Maybe I had you followed. Maybe I know exactly where, and with whom, you spend your Friday nights. Have you thought of that, babe?“

Blood rushes down to your feet as you break in an instant sweat. Prickling scalp, nape and armpits. The sheer idea is unbearable. This life, or whatever’s left of it, colliding, trespassing on your time with Frankie. At your back, the weak breeze wafts in, and your eyes clench off the vision of the fourteen-story void. 

The sound of Adrian’s delighted snigger jerks you out of the intrusive thought. Your eyes are wide open again. 

“I don’t think you care enough about the details of my whereabouts to spend money on a PI,” you start, lifting your chin as if your heart isn’t thumping in your throat. “In fact, I think it suits you just fine that I haven’t been on your ass about your whereabouts.”

There’s the faintest hint of a wince altering his smug expression at your profanity, but the words keep pouring out of you. 

“Most of all, I think that if you really had me followed, you wouldn’t have missed the chance to ruin whatever you think this is for me. Like you do with everything I–” 

“Ruin whatever…? Oh, I’m the one ruining things?” he cuts in, lunging toward you in a movement so sudden you recoil against the open window frame. “When you’re the one who’s single-handedly destroyed our relationship with your fucking pills and your fucking depression? And now you’re having an affair with God knows who! I hope you haven’t been dumb enough to pick him among our circle of friends. And I fucking hope to God it is a man. Maybe you’re a degenerate, just like your sister.” 

You hit the mark. He doesn’t really care, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but his blatant lack of interest still hurts. After all those years, it still makes you bleed. The pain is washed over by anger, and the cruelty of his grossly redacted and biased narrative of your history. Doubt and guilt tighten your throat. 

He’s taken a step back. Hands on his hips, he’s seemingly waiting for you to counter. After a few dragging seconds, when he’s satisfied that he has silenced you for good, he faces away, and begins to unbutton his shirt. 

“I— You’re— you’re so fucking unfair,” you stutter, deflating, miserable.

“I’m going to shower. Make sure that window’s closed by the time I get out of the bathroom.”

“I’m leaving.”

The words rise from between the folds of your existence, overdue, evident, irreversible. They slip through your lips, and panic pervades your body at a molecular level. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Adrian retorts with an audible smirk, sliding his shirt off his lean frame, “the Grants are coming over for dinner. That’s the only reason I came home.”

Tim Grant is Adrian’s most valuable client after your father. He’s in politics, in some office or other, you know you should know. His wife Cheryl is a flawless, sculptural blond. A Stanford graduate who has mothered five children. She’s three years younger than you. 

You need to get out of here. 

You are rooted to the tiled floor, vaguely aware of the lingering taste of blood on your tongue, and your right hand pinching your thigh. 

“I’m leaving you,” you clarify. 

Adrian turns around and pauses. He looks at you. Looks at you for what feels like the first time in months. At last, you caught his attention.

The alarms are bellowing inside your skull. You have nowhere to go. Ava is over a thousand miles away, everyone you know is primarily Adrian’s friend, and there’s no way you’re going back to your parents. 

Beyond the window, the indigo dusk is shifting to blue. The breeze is soothing. It’s Sunday, April 26th, 6.52 pm. You’re standing on the threshold.

“You’re what?” he asks in a thin voice. 

“I’m leaving you.”

Something flashes across his face, something you’ve never seen before. This is uncharted territory, for the both of you. He scrunches his brow, narrowed eyes flickering between yours. Lifting both hands, palms outstretched toward you, he speaks in a slow voice, detaching each word. 

“Alright, okay, I get it. You’re angry. You can leave the window—”

“I don’t care about the window, Adrian, I am leaving you.”

“Lee, this is not the fucking time for this, the Grants will be here in half an hour and the catering–”

“I don’t give a shit about the Grants!” you burst out.

Adrian’s hands fall limply to his side, his eyebrows jumping to his hairline. He licks his lips, an attempt to regain some countenance. 

“Okay,” he concedes in a strained tone, “I guess we’re doing this. Where do you go every Friday? Who are you fucking?”

“Now, you care? Now, you want to know? When I’m halfway through the goddamn door? I gave you ten years of my life, Adrian! Ten years! I loved you! I gave you everything!”

“You loved me?” he yells back, pocking a finger to his chest. “You gave me everything? Are you fucking serious? You are never here, Lee. You’re checked out, 24/7. Is that what you call love? Let me laugh! You never ask me any question about work, you never once came golfing with me. You can’t even pretend to care!”

“You are so fucking unfair! Tell me, how does it feel, to treat me like you do?”

“I am not unfair, Lee, I am realistic! Yes, maybe you loved me, but as soon as shit got real between us, you fucking checked out! An eight-year-long engagement? Really? Is that your idea of giving me everything? I am the laughingstock of everyone at the firm! You want to know how it feels? How it feels when I see your face closing off every time I try talking to you? You don’t know how to love, Lee. You know nothing about love. Unrealistic expectations, that’s all you got. Dreams. Childish fantasies. You’re heartless. Remote. Fucking hollow. Completely unfit for reality.”

The walls ring out with his acid rant. He stands before you panting, unmasked, with his shaking frame and his unfiltered anger, with his truth and his raw pain openly displayed. With his hurt and his loss and regrets. It’s vertiginous, unbearable. Your body recoils into the glass panels, tears spilling down your face. 

He straightens up, and takes in a quivering breath, a pointed but vain effort to recompose his face.

“Now would you please be so kind as to clean up, and instruct the maid to set the dinner table before catering gets here?”

But his vulnerability lingers in his voice and your crying intensifies, your chest convulsing under the weight of your sobs, of his words, of all your mistakes, and you slump down onto the cold hard floor, weeping uncontrollably. 

“I’m– I’m sorry,” you blubber, “I’m so sorry, Adrian.”

He sniffles, taken aback. Standing awkwardly, he wipes his nose with the back of his hand and takes a tentative step closer.  

“Babe, come on. Don’t cry. I’m sorry. Go get cleaned up, we’ll talk about this later.” 

But you can’t stop crying, your life is folding in on you, all of your certitudes, your broken heart and your grievances exposed, ugly and distorted, through a drastically different lens.

“I’m so sorry, Adrian. I– I loved you wrong. I wasted– wasted your time,” you sob.

“Shh no, come on,” he coos, crouching down beside you, brushing the hair from your face in a gesture so gentle it only makes you cry harder, hot tears scalding your eyelids, “I’m sorry I lost it. I’m tired. Let’s not talk about this now.”

All you want is to reach out and wrap your arms around him. Hold him tight, stop shaking. Go back to the start, take away the pain you’ve caused. But there’s no going back, and your hands are clenched around your shins, pressing your knees into your chest.

“I’m not the one you need. I failed you. I’m not the woman you need and I tried to be and I led you on– and I wasted your years and— and mine, I’m so sorry, Adrian.”

“Babe, stop crying,” he pleads again, panic skirting his tone, “I’m sorry I lashed out. Fuck, I know I can be an asshole sometimes. We can work this out, we always work things out.”

His clear-blue eyes shine with unshed tears. Everything inside you hurts. Everything inside you bleeds.

“I should have done this sooner. I was so scared. I’m such a fucking coward, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t leave, Lee,” he rasps. “We can– Please. Stay.”

—

You stay, inexplicably. You stay to host the Grants. 

Adrian lets you use the shower first, guiding you to the en-suite bathroom, his arm wound around your waist. You keep crying under the hot stream of water, unable to control your sobbing, choking on the hot steam with every shaking gulp of air you take in. 

And perhaps it’s the only way you’ll ever get out of here. Dead, chocked up on grief. 

You let the water run while you step out of the cubicle. Adrian stores the double-edge blades for his razor above the sink, inside the cabinet behind the backlit mirror. The sharp metal slices a shallow cut in the pad of your ring finger when you grab one. You adjust your grip, splay your hand at the top of your thigh, and slash the blade through your tender flesh, underneath the old scar Frankie likes to tease with his thumb. 

Trembling hand, straight line. The pain is searing, your relief immediate. Back in the shower, the blood runs down your leg in crimson rivulets, and your crying finally ebbs. 

In the bedroom, you swallow an anxiolytic, then another. The tablets catch at your throat going down, burning your esophagus like shame and failure.

You’re no longer a person, not really, not anymore. You’re the sum of your pains and discomforts. You’re that cut on your thigh and those pills in your throat. You're the black mascara that coats your eyelashes and burns your eyelids, you’re the red lipstick that dries out your lips. Fragments of you, held together by the snug material of a dress that you hate, a gift from Adrian, the figment of someone else’s desire. 

When the doorbell rings, your hair is still wet.

The dinner is an awkward mess. Adrian looks shell shocked, powerless to summon his usual charming persona. His answers are monosyllabic, incoherent. To you, it’s a complete blur. You drink fast, and too much, hanging your dazed gaze on Cheryl’s double row of natural pearls. Every time you shift in your seat, a sharp pain stings your thigh. You smile through it. 

The poorly executed charade goes on for about an hour before the Grants make a hasty exit. 

Tethered by a thinning thread of lucidity, you go straight to your bedroom, Adrian on your heels. He watches you from the threshold as you heave your shabby college suitcase onto the bed, his pale face twisted, clouded eyes, pinched lips. You try to avert your gaze, you need to hurry, to gather your brains, gather your things. 

But your eyes flicker back up to him. One last look. One last tear. You stare at each other in silence for a brief moment, until a draft closes the bedroom window with a muted bang. Adrian slides his hands in his pockets, turns around, and walks away. A few seconds later, the front door opens and slams shuts behind him.

Your heart trips and plummets. Somewhere far away, long ago, a small voice implores you to run after him. To beg for his forgiveness. To mend your faded dreams. 

Completely unfit for reality. 

Nausea lurches in your stomach, and you lower your head to the empty suitcase stretched open across the bed. You need to get out of here. 

But what are you supposed to pack? The apartment is filled with reminders of what you’ve destroyed. Photo albums, art, trinkets and souvenirs, Christmas presents, birthday gifts. It’s like slicing through ten years of your life, ten years of yourself, of the person you’ve been and never again will be. Letting that woman die and disappear. What do you need to take and what do you choose to leave? 

Completely unfit for reality.

Fighting a sense of urgency, your vision getting more unfocused by the minute, you go through the nightstand and dresser. Prescription pills in rattling tubes, a little box of old Polaroids and Ava’s maternity hospital bracelet, your e-reader and random books, two chargers coiled on the floor like resting snakes… You throw everything indistinctly into the suitcase. It swallows your belongings like a chasm, like a crevice, like a monster with unhinged jaws. 

Staggering to the walk-in closet, you slide some clothes off their hangers and shelves, throwing them blinding behind you. With precarious balance, you rise on your tiptoe to retrieve a leather-bound edition of Anna Karenina hidden on the upper shelf. A gift from your Russian lit professor for your graduation, with an inscription etched in his distinguished cursive on the cover page. Something about you being a promising young woman. You haven’t looked at it in years.  

Completely unfit for reality. 

You pull out a travelling bag, and stuff the book inside it, along with some shoes, and in the bathroom, cosmetics and lotions. 

When you try to change out of the dress, blood has glued the fabric to your skin. You have to rip it off like a band-aid, like a life-threatening habit. The slit starts bleeding again. 

The suitcase’s tired wheels swivel with a loud squeak over the tiled floor of the corridor. The bag keeps sliding off your shoulder. It’s all too cumbersome for you to drag, heavy like your spinning head, swaying like your vision. 

In the living-room, the city’s night lights twinkle and dance behind the floor-to-ceiling windows. You search the room in the semi darkness for something else, something more. Your laptop perhaps, before you realize it’s in your office. Do you need a laptop? You probably do. 

Completely unfit for reality. 

You grab your I ❤️ NY bag and drop the apartment’s keys on the console by the door. Propelled by the creature in your chest, by decades of silence, by an obscure promise for peace, you leave. 

You are in no condition to drive, but you don’t need to be. Your drowsy body’s on autopilot, and the traffic on the 589 northbound is fluid. 

You pull up in front of the motel a mere 54 minutes later, and stagger over to the office, where the young clerk with his blond hair in a bun is hunched over his phone. 

The suitcase refuses to roll over the gravel. One of the wheels folds and breaks off. You have to walk back to the reception and ask the young man to help you carry everything to the room. Your voice is slurring. You rummage in your bag for some cash to give him, only to find him already gone when you triumphantly pull out a tenner from your wallet. 

You don’t fold the dirty bedspread. You don’t clean up your face or brush your teeth, you don’t undress. You kick off your sneakers, and slip under the sheets, Adrian’s words ringing out in your ears. The truth they carry deafening, inescapable. 

You’re unfit for life. For reality. You went out of your way to create a relationship with a stranger, exempt of responsibility, of commitment, of any kind of difficulty. So you could revel in the illusion of a bond, of something greater than you. So you could romanticize a hope, without having to materialize its promises.  

You cry yourself to sleep. 

—

Buried at the bottom of your bag, your iPhone chimes for a solid 14 minutes before you can crack open an eyelid. Your hangover is vicious. It’s a wildfire raging inside your brain. It’s your body thrown off a cliff. 

Cautiously, you sit up on the edge of the bed, brain sloshing inside your skull, nausea lapping up at your esophagus. The harsh denim of your jeans rubs over the slit on your thigh, abrading the cut. A brownish stain of dried blood smears the fabric, and you scoff, thinking you didn’t pack any band-aid. 

The prospect of dragging your body under the shower and putting on clean clothes feels like medieval torture, but presenting yourself at the office reeking of alcohol and in yesterday’s blood-stained jeans is not an option. Not a satisfaction you’ll grant your father, anyway, and the thought gives you strength. 

In the bathroom’s black-edged mirror, your reflection is haggard. Downright cadaverous.

You’re sick a first time, emptying the content of your stomach crouched over the chirped porcelain bowl of the toilet, and then a second time, in the parking lot, after gulping down a tepid coffee from the vending machine in the reception. With the tip of your shoe, you scuff the gravel over the small mess and get in your car, not in the least ready to face the morning traffic, your father, or the rest of your life. But proceeding anyway.  

When you step out of the elevator, your father’s senior secretary is waiting for you in the lobby. Adrian has made some phone calls. Kaytee ogles the scene from her desk, a petty glee lighting up her dull features. 

You follow the older woman to your father’s office, unfazed, obedient. Absent-mindedly watching her restricted gait, encased between her pencil skirt and 5 inches heels.

Richard is calm. An impassive look on his handsome face concealing all thoughts and emotions, the sleeves of his Armani shirt rolled-up to his elbow. He lets you speak first, he listens in silence. 

I’m resigning with immediate effect, the words come out of your mouth easy, and you, too, listen to them. 

You expect to be chastised. Scolded like a rebellious teenager. Sent back to your desk with a mention etched in red on your permanent record and a slap on your hands. You brace yourself for the usual words, his favorite weapons, designed and crafted to humiliate and defeat. 

Instead, he reasons. He bargains. Calling you a valuable partner. A genuine asset for the company, he says, with irreplaceable experience and unique expertise. 

Shadows shift across the glass surface of his desk. His cellphone buzzes, and remains unanswered as he keeps talking, his attention focused on you for longer than it’s ever been. What would your trajectory have been, if he’d paid attention to you from the beginning? If you’d heard his praises as a child? 

What did Adrian say? How did he sound?

After a while, it’s your turn to speak. At the first mention of your shares, Richard’s posture and demeanor switches instantly. Before long, you know you’re never getting this money Ava has instructed you to fight for. 

You don’t argue, you know better. You’ve witnessed firsthand his power of nuisance. His sense of entitlement and his twisted passion for meticulous revenge. But your father’s ire escalates, until he’s standing next to you, pulling you up your seat by your arm and manhandling you toward the double glass doors. 

You wonder how far he’ll go, if he’ll make this public, if he’ll risk the scandal. You soon find out. You’re a rag doll in his hold, as he drags you toward the elevator, seething and sputtering threats.

“You have dishonored me, the name I gave you, your family. You’ve been nothing but pointless ever since you were born. Don’t ever try to come back here. I don’t care if you’re starving.”

As you stumble inside the cabin of the mirror-lined elevator, you realize you never got to retrieve your laptop. You turn to face your father and, looking straight at him, you cover your ears. 

Before the doors close with a cheerful ding, you see his face distorted by wrath, turning a violent shade of purple. 

—

“What do you mean, the room is taken? Taken by whom?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I cannot disclose that kind of information.”

Raul’s affected attempt at hotelier’s etiquette has Frankie scoffing into the receiver. Or is it Joachim? No, you’d said his name was Raul.

“Wait, it’s taken now, but is it booked on Friday? I just need it on Friday. Why did you give them that room, anyway? I’m pretty sure you got plenty of vacancies.”

The real question is, why is he behaving like an ass to this poor man who’s only trying to do his job properly? Why is he getting so nervous over this? How does it matter if you’re not in room number 2, this week?

“I don’t know if the room will be available on Friday, sir. I am afraid the lady hasn’t specified a date for the end of her stay.” 

Frankie’s spine grows rigid. Like a bucket of ice is being poured over his head in slow motion. That ominous ticking fires in the back of his head, so rapid and loud it might fracture his skull open.

“What lady?” he rasps, his throat suddenly parched. “Who’s in there? Is it the– Is it the woman who comes in every week? With me?”

Raul doesn’t answer, and his silence tells Frankie everything he needs to know.

“Alright, thanks,” he snaps, hanging up and throwing the phone on the desk. 

An hour and a half later, he’s pulling up into the motel’s parking lot. Lupe has been gracious enough to agree to pick up Lua from day-care, even though Monday is his day, so he’s got the rest of the afternoon to sort this out. 

This is foolish, though. He, is foolish. Your car is not even here. He’s probably overreacting. 

The thing is, his gut instinct tells him he’s not. It’s a potent, familiar dread, one that sets all his senses on alert. One he’s sworn himself never to ignore again, after Tom’s death. It’s that vision he had on Christmas evening. Your lonely silhouette sitting by the window on the edge of the bed. It’s that pull in his chest. That ache in his flesh.

He gets out of the truck swiftly, with a quick glance at the reception office, and walks straight to room number 2. The place looks even shittier in the bright midday sun. The contours of the low building are pressed flat by the blinding light and the heat. The lime wall between room 2 and 3 is streaked with deep, long winding cracks. The paint on the porch’s poles is chipped, coming off the sun-baked wood in large, crispy flakes. The hanging lights are covered in rust, the base of the railing in mold. 

Once more, guilt squeezes his chest tight at the thought that he’s made you come here, week after week. That you docilely agreed to it, and never said a word. That you kept coming back. Back to this place. Back to him, too.

The door is locked. He rattles the doorknob harder, more to shake off his own frustration than to achieve anything else. The yellow curtains are drawn, and no matter how hard he squints, he can’t see jack shit beyond them. 

He’s probably overreacting. 

What if he picked the lock? Just to make sure you’re not in here?

“Jesus,” he sighs, running a palm over his face, “the fuck is wrong with me?”

He stands in front of the door a while longer, head hung, hands propped on his hips, so still he can feel the sweat beading on his nape. Eventually, he lifts his cap and combs his fingers through his hair, then turns around and steps down the porch. 

He’s halfway to his truck when your sedan appears at the end of the road.

—

On the drive back to the motel, you roll both front windows down, and let the warm breeze blow your hair in every direction.

Yesterday, the pain was all encompassing. So sharp and piercing, you wanted to cease existing. Now, thoughts and images come and go, carried by the draft from the opened window. Kaytee moving into your office, and your employment prospects, nonexistent in the Bay Area. Your forgotten laptop. The talk you need to have with Ava. Your financial situation. 

Everything seems distant, another woman’s problems. You are numb. Remote. Hollow. 

The tears will come back, though. When you ask yourself if this tragicomic public humiliation was your final interaction with your father. If the formal lunch you shared with your mother last Thursday was the last time you’ll ever see her, the last time you’ll hug her frail figure. When you realize you won’t see Agatha grow up. 

You will reject the pain. The sense of loss. Of isolation. But it’ll sweep you away anyway. 

The fact that you have voluntarily orphaned yourself. 

You will choke on your grief. 

“I need to start making plans,” you inform the empty cab with an even tone. 

Or you could simply hide away in the motel for the rest of your life. Waiting for Frankie, Friday after Friday. 

Frankie. 

A strangled gasp ricochets inside your throat. You push the thought of him away, bury it deep between the folds. 

Completely unfit for reality.

But when you turn into the parking lot, the red truck immediately pops into view, stationed in front of your room. Frankie’s standing a few yards away from it, eyes trained on you through the windshield. 

Your body tenses up, a lump grows inside your throat, your grip on the steering-wheel white-knuckled as you maneuver to park. 

When you kill the engine, Frankie walks up to your door. There’s a suspended beat, as he motions to grab the handle. But he seems to reconsider, taking a step back and waiting for you to get out. 

Raw nerves and flayed skin, you exit the car. 

“Are you okay?” he asks when you’re standing in front of him. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Lee, are you okay?” he repeats, detaching each word, his large hands coming to frame your face. 

Shaded by the brim of his hat, his dark eyes skip nervously over your features. You know what you look like, puffy eyes, ashen face, and you squirm nervously in his hold.

“I’m okay. I’m fine. I didn’t fall again,” you add with an empty chuckle, trying to pull away from his grip, evade his scrutiny. 

“Jesus fuck, Lee,” he sighs, shaking his head. 

Your spine grows stiff, but his hand is already cradling the back of your head, drawing you in. Hunched around you, he presses your rigid, reluctant form into his chest, into his heat, breathing you in. Face tucked into the curve of his neck, you stand awkwardly still between his arms, terrified of your body’s reaction should you let go and relent, should you lose yourself in the reassurance of his solid figure, of his soothing embrace, of his comforting scent. 

Eventually, you wrap your arms around his torso, skimming your hands over the soft, cottony fabric of his shirt. 

“Why are you here?” you ask again, your voice muffled against his collarbone. 

“I called to book the room,” he starts, talking into your hair, “and this Raul guy said it was taken. By a woman.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I don’t know. I just knew.”

Clenching your eyes shut, you ball his t-shirt in your fists. 

“Listen, Lee, I can help you. With whatever it is that’s going on. I can help you. Let me help you.”

“I know. I know you can. But I… I think I need to help me.”

Prove yourself, and that collective we, that you can make decisions, be resourceful, be resilient. Other than through silence and disappearance and pills. Stand on your own. Face reality. Deal with it.

You feel the working of this throat against your temple. His hands span your back, spreading warmth in their trail, finding purchase on your waist with a vice grip, as if to make sure you’re really here. 

“I understand.” The deep, velvety roundness of his voice envelops you. “Would you tell me if you needed my help?”

You nod, your cheek brushing the pebbled skin of his neck. 

“I promise.”

His heart beats strong and steady against your breasts. You lean into the slow, pulsating rhythm, into his life force. 

“I need to talk to you,” you start, and his hold on you tightens. “Can we go inside your truck?”

“Sure,” he answers, but he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t move, and you grow anxious, afraid you’ll lose courage, and the momentum will fall to a halt. 

Completely unfit for reality. 

“Okay, let’s go,” he finally says, and you lead the way, walking in short strides toward the passenger side of the vehicle. 

Once you’re both seated, Frankie turns on the ignition. The AC immediately kicks in. In the harsh, unforgiving daylight, the dashboard is not black, but a faded shade of anthracite gray. 

When you turn to face him, he’s already looking at you, the dark pools of his eyes boring into you, searching. 

“I left,” you say in a flat tone, your voice as hollow as your chest feels. “I left Adrian. My fiancé. And I felt my father. The company, I mean. I quit.”

He registers the news, the crease in his brow deepening, lips slightly parting. 

“Okay,’ he nods. “How did it go?”

“It… I don’t know. It went? I’m not sure if they realize I’m never coming back. Adrian especially. Well, my father too, actually. Although he made it clear that he never wants to see me again. I don’t know. Maybe I’m mistaken. I really torched those bridges,” you shrug.

A myriad of fleeting expressions animate Frankie’s features, too fast for your overwrought brain to read into any of them, before they settle into the familiar frown.

He swallows hard, before he asks, “How are you feeling?”

In turn, you furrow your brow, searching the abyss inside your chest. 

“You know the movie, The Dragon Tattoo Girl? Or whatever it’s called? The one with the James Bond actor?”

He lifts a puzzled eyebrow, but nods for you to keep going.

“You know toward the end, when they’re in London and they go tell this woman that her brother is dead, the killer guy. Her abuser, basically. They go back to the car to monitor her computer activity, and she’s just… shopping online?”

“Yea?”

“That’s how I feel.”

He huffs, and you don't know how to interpret his reaction. 

“It doesn’t change anything. For you, I mean. My sister’s in New York, she got away some time ago and I–”

“Lee,” he cuts in, his hand flying to grab yours, but you recoil from his touch, “I told you, you can ask me for anything. Anything you want. Anything you need.”

His gaze pierces through you, soft sad eyes, cold hard stare, and you can’t withhold it any longer. You face away, turning to the brass number 2 hanging upside down on the wooden door. Behind it, there's a travel bag and a beat-up suitcase with a broken wheel that contain all of your belongings. 

You’re thirty-five years old. You only just broke free, and everything you want is in this cab. 

This man, his past, the burden of his sins. The strength and resilience weaved within the fabric of him, his tender touch, too, and the promise of his future. The sense of safety he provides you, unlike anything you’ve ever known in all your years. 

His solid body’s thrumming next to yours, steady vibrations caressing your skin. The air between you ripples as if it were liquid. It’s the only thing you can feel. The first thing you’ve felt since you woke up this morning. 

His words come back to you, from so many Fridays ago, pained and yearning, Are you real? You never questioned the realness of him. You gave yourself blindly to the reality of this. This inescapable and electrifying living thing between you. It’s not the reason behind your emancipation. But it has propelled you toward it.  

Was it all just a dream? 

“Do you sometimes think…” you trail off, hesitant. You’re still not looking at him. The heel of your palm comes to rest over your denim, over the thin wound that brings you relief. You press down on it. You wince. “I don’t know how to ask you this.”

His voice rumbles with tension. “Just shoot it straight.”  

“Do you sometimes think you’ve replaced cocaine with— with me? With this? Whatever this is?”

You risk a glance in his direction and watch him take the blow, eyes lowering to his hands. He releases a deep sigh, cocking his chin. 

“Aren’t you scared you’ve replaced an addiction with another?” you continue. “What if… what if I’ve traded my pills for you?”

His eyes flick up to yours. He stares at you in silence for a while. When he moves, it’s to take off his hat. He props it on the dashboard, assuring its balance, before his gaze returns to you, and you brace yourself, chewing on your cheek.

“Yea, it’s… It’s a valid question. Can’t say I haven’t thought about it. At the beginning, at least. But the answer’s no. I don’t think I’ve traded cocaine for you. I like the man I am when I’m with you. You make me want to be happy. You make me feel good. Coke never made me feel good. It was a means to escape… pretty much everything. I don’t want to escape anymore. I don’t need it. I don’t think I can ever unlearn what you taught me.”

Frankie pauses, letting his words settle over your tense, motionless body. You grit your teeth, your jaw aching. 

He breathes in deep. His voice drops to a murmur, low, but firm.

“I love you, Lee. I was never in love with drugs. I don’t think I was ever in love, not really. Not the way I’m in love with you.”

Your body shudders, tears rising like high water inside your throat, face flushing. All of your suppressed emotions come back rushing. Guilt and fear, remorse, rage and resentment. Hope and elation, too. They tumble inside you like boulders falling off a mountain, in a formidable landslide.

“You can’t love me,” you say in a choked up voice.

“Why is that?”

“Because I don’t know if I can be loved. I don't know if I know how to love back.”

“That’s bullshit,” Frankie grunts. 

“It’s not,” you retort, aggressively brushing a rogue tear from your cheek with the flat of your palm, angered by the confidence of his statement. “You don’t know– I’m faulty, Frankie. I’m fucked up. Defective. I can’t handle reality.”

“How about you stop talking about yourself like you’re a machine? Nobody can handle a shitty reality they feel trapped in, Lee. Nobody. Just look at me,” he adds with a shrug.

His words open a floodgate, more tears spilling out of you, streaming down your face in scalding rivulets. 

“But what will happen when you don’t love me anymore?”

“That’s never gonna happen. I can promise you that much.”

“No, that’s bullshit!” you spit out. “Everything passes! Everything ends! Everything, and you know it!”

“Not this. This never ends.”

His assertive tone, his steady demeanor, your stupid, uncontrollable tears, everything sets off your temper. Yet, something throbs inside you, longing and want, stronger than your rage, pulling you toward his still, solid body. His gaze pins you down, not like a dead butterfly in a glass frame, but like a benevolent shadow stretching over you, seeping through your flesh to wrap around your heart and protect it, keep it safe. 

You push back against it, back into the door, the handle biting into your spine, covering your mess of a face with trembling hands. 

“I know what my track record looks like,” he says. “But I’m asking you to trust me. My love for you has no end.”

The seat bench creaks under his weight as he moves closer to you. 

“C’mere, baby.”

His hand circles your arm, pulling with gentle little tugs until you give in and let him tuck you into his side, his arms keeping you firmly pressed against him. His scent engulfs you, his quiet strength, the rumble of his voice felt through your chest as he hums quietly into the crown of your head, Don’t be scared, you got this, I got you. 

Surrendering, you allow yourself to cry, weeping loudly into his shirt, full-body sobs quaking your frame. You might break apart in a million scattered pieces, should he let go of you, but you’re not scared, you got this, he got you, resolute, unyielding, and you weep until the tears run dry, until your rib cage is too sore to heave, until the convulsing of your throat is reduced to a silent tremor.

Releasing his hold, he guides you over his lap to sit you between his legs, and you burrow into him like a small child, eyes drifting close, finally resting. 

—

Around the truck, the sky has gradually changed. The crushing, white-hot afternoon light slowly gave way to a fuzzy, faded coral atmosphere. 

Frankie’s lost track of the time. His arm is numb, his shoulder sore, but he’s not moving. He won’t risk disturbing you. Your breathing comes in deep and regular, you might be sleeping. 

From orange to pink to indigo, the day dies out into the night. 

It’s almost dark when you quietly call his name, and he can hear the toll grief has taken on you in the rasping of your voice. 

“Is it okay for you to be here?” you ask. “Are you going to leave?”

The questions send chills down his spine. Now is the time to tell you. Now or never. It’s been years since he’s known such a fear. 

“No, it’s fine.” He marks a pause, then takes a leap. “What did you mean, earlier, when you said it doesn’t change anything for me?”

Releasing his shirt, your fingers splay over his chest, and with an apparent effort, you push away so you can look at him. In the dim dusk light, he can hardly distinguish your expression. 

“I meant just that. I didn’t leave Adrian on your account. I’m not expecting you to do the same for me. I’m not going to ask you to divorce your wife and abandon your child.”

He runs a palm over his face, sighing heavily.

“I’m not married, Lee. I never married Lua’s mother, and we split up a little over a year ago. Right after that… after that bullshit mission I told you about.” 

Your silence is unbearable. His heart thumps painfully in his throat.

“We kept living together. Until a week ago. Lua’s still young, it was more convenient. I owed them that much.”

You’re still silent, your mind probably working over the implications, measuring the extent of his betrayal, when he’s asked you mere moments ago to put all your faith in him. 

“Why did you never tell me?”

Sweat prickles over this nape. 

“It was easier at first. I could keep you– keep you at a distance. I was scared.” 

“Scared of me?” 

Your eyes glimmer in the darkness of the cab, boring intently into his. He’s reminded of that very first night at the bar, when they bore into his back. When he swiveled on his stool and your gazes met for the first time. When your lives collided. He thinks about how much your eyes have come into focus, since. 

“Scared of what you made me feel,” he breathes.

“What did I make you feel?” 

“Like I’m worthy of you. What I saw on your face when you looked at me… I didn’t want it, but I also didn’t want to lose it. I didn’t want to risk changing anything. I’m sorry, Lee. I’m so fucking sorry.” 

He straightens up imperceptibly, moving to touch you, but you lean back into the steering wheel.

“What did you see on my face?”

The words come out of him in a husky murmur.

“You were burning inside. Burning with life. And you wanted me.” 

Everything stands still.

Slowly, your hand goes up to his cheek. It rests there, light and soft. A cool and soothing touch. Like it’s always been. Your thumb strokes his scruff, and he leans into your palm, exhaling painfully.

“I still want you, Frankie,” you whisper, leaning forward, your lips meeting his lips. 

—

You step out of the truck feeling drained, acutely aware of every aching bone and tissue in your body. Frankie by your side, watching over your balance, you walk back to your car to get the room’s key. The brown diamond-shaped keychain fits in your palm with a homely feeling. 

The room has been made. The artificial perfume of the industrial detergent blends with the musty scent woven into the curtains and rug.

Frankie swallows you in his embrace as soon as the door closes behind you. His mouth slanted over yours, his face pressed into your face, his kisses are deep, needy, desperate, and so are yours. His arms wound up tight around your waist, you cling onto his broad frame. 

With infinite care, with measured movements, he starts undressing you. You’re docile, pliant like a sleepy child, giving in to the solace of his touch, relenting to the safety of his devotion. 

Kneeling at your feet, he slowly slides down your jeans, revealing the mess on your thigh. Clumps of rusty-colored blood are caked around the flushed, raised skin. The sight stops him. Your heart cowers, your breathing suspended as he stares at your self-inflicted wound. 

His left palm skims your leg upward, until the small cut is framed between his thumb and index. When he looks up, you can’t tell if the tears gleaming in his eyes are anger or sadness. You cup his face, so many words stuck inside your chest. So many fears, so many regrets. 

Soon, you’re crushed under his weight, spread around his breadth, ankles locked over the small of his back as he fucks his love into you, his hands hooked over your shoulders. His skin rubbing against yours, long, languid, thorough strokes splitting you open. The painful ecstasy only he can give you, when he buries himself deep inside you, his forehead pressed to yours. Healing all of your wounds. 

He’s breathing you, his heart thumping inside your rib cage, I love you, Lee, I love you, but your words still won’t come out, so you nod, and he knows. Your nails sink into his back, and you pray that he knows. 

For the first time ever, you sleep in his arms throughout the night. His chest to your back, a thin shin of sweat between your two bodies. His steady breathing fanning the hair on your nape. You wake up together, on a Tuesday morning. 

Stirring out of sleep, he pulls you flush against him. His plush lips trace a wet path of open-mouth kisses along your neck, exploring the expanse of your skin, drawing ephemeral patterns, warm and unhurried. Softly humming, he tastes you, licking your sweat, inhaling your scent, nuzzling the edge of your jaw and nibbling your earlobe, his cock hardening against your cheeks, his calloused hands kneading the soft swell of your belly. 

His mouth rounds over the slope of your shoulder, and he sucks in sharply. You jerk between his restraining hold, his tongue peaking out to ease the blooming bruise. 

You lift a sleep-heavy eyelids and the morning light hits your iris. Dust particles suspended in the golden sunbeams, the musty smell from the sun-warm curtains carried in the air. His teeth sink in sharp at the base of your neck, a low growl rumbling from his chest, primal and possessive, and it dawns on you. What he’s doing. 

The realization thrums along your nerve-endings, courses through your veins, it blooms wild and spreading inside your chest. He is yours. He was always yours. He was never running away from something, not really. He was running to you. 

He chose you, remote and aloof. A bottomless well of craved affection, lonely scars, lost ideals, and he filled you. Imprinted on you his want and his need, his trust and reverence, in all the ways you let him. 

You summoned him. He found you. He appeared. 

You push back into him, granting him access to the line of your throat, and his bite sinks in deeper. Your fingers card through his hair, heart bursting, body like a fever, arousal pooling slick and sticky between your hips. 

He fucks you slow. Shallow thrusts, the fat head of his cock teasing your entrance, inching further inside your heat with each dragging stroke. His arm banded across your chest and his hand between your folds, he commands your pleasure, flooding all your senses, until you cry out his name, until he comes with you, until your bodies are spent. 

You shower together, and drive to a nearby diner for breakfast. Sitting in a red pleather booth, you drink strong filter coffee and devour thick, buttery pancakes, Frankie’s spend trickling down your panties as you watch him shovel scrambled eggs inside his mouth with a ravenous appetite, his face beaming with a dimpled grin. 

Your smile is so wide, your cheeks hurt.

On the way back, he stops by a CVS to get plasters, gauze and an antiseptic ointment. In the room, kneeled between your thighs, he lets you twirl his curls around your fingers while he dresses your small wound in silence, cautious and meticulous, deft and experienced. 

You know you should talk, know you should start making plans, but he carries his heart in his hand, and his touch is soothing, and your want is restless. High after high, your body tenses and breaks, as he fucks your cunt, your ass, your face, fills you up with his come, greedy teeth sunk into your flesh. 

After making a few calls, he stays another night, and when he leaves for work on Wednesday morning, you spend several minutes observing your reflection in the bathroom’s black-edged mirror. You look good, if not rested, your skin gleaming with a flattering post-orgasm glow. 

You detail the bite marks adorning your skin. They’re everywhere. He hasn’t been gentle. He hasn’t been careful. Some of them still a little sore when you poke a finger into the bruised, tender flesh. The mild pain draws a buzzing, electrical line from your heart to your core. You smile at your reflection. Stop me, you challenge the woman in the mirror. She smirks back at you. She’s so beautiful, so confident, your breath hitches. 

Eventually, your current situation resurfaces. Calling Ava sits at the top of your mental checklist. You wait for a couple of hours, until her lunch break, to dial her number. The first ringtones send you into a brief panic. Above the desk, the woman in the mirror is looking at you. You anchor yourself to her image. 

When Ava picks up, you tell her what happened in terse words: you broke up with Adrian, then quit. You’re currently staying in an out-of-town motel. 

She hollers into the receiver, and you wince with an uncertain smile, holding the phone away from your ear. There are a few cheerful curses as she expresses her pride and surprise, but she quickly gets back on track. 

“So when are you coming here? You’re coming here, right? Richard is gonna make sure you never work again over there. You know that, right?”

“Yes, I know,” you concede ruefully. 

That’s the part of the conversation you should have planned ahead. But you’re still riding high on the fuck-drunk euphoria of the last two days. She questions you for more details, demanding an elaborate report of the events that you’re not too keen on remembering, nor submitting to her judgment. She left without a word, without a goodbye, unnoticed, unacknowledged. You had to confront not one, but two of them.

It occurs to you that you don’t have to tell. Nothing forces you to. Maybe, for the first time ever, you can curate your own experience. Refuse to give in to peer pressure, however benevolent. Define your own story. Be its main character, and its sole narrator. 

“What would I do in New York, anyway? Crash your couch? And then?”

“I told you, Polly has a job for you.”

“No, you said Polly could help me find something. Now she has a job for me? What kind of job?” you frown. “At her practice?”

“No, no. Something in a publishing company one of her clients owns. I don’t know, nothing fancy apparently, but enough to get you started.”

“And what, they’re holding a position for a woman without any qualification and zero experience in their field?”

“If Polly says it’s a sure thing, then it’s a sure thing. Call her. She only mentioned it in passing, we never actually thought you’d fucking leave, Lee! And our couch is very comfortable, I’ll have you know.”

This goddamn collective we. 

When you hang up, nothing is decided. Frankie won’t be back until Friday evening. You're going to be on your own to stew over the crossroads for the next two days. 

Lost in the liminal sequence. 

Ava is right. You could never find a decent job in Tampa. You can’t stay here. You don’t even want to stay. You hate this city, you hate this fucking state. It has been your life-long dream to break-free and get away. The idea of staying inside your father’s radius of influence, within reach of Adrian, gives you the wrong kind of chills. 

But New York? Do you really want to live there? The city has always mildly scared you, with its buoyant history and its mythical aura. Too big, too noisy, too stressful. Completely anonymous. It would be so easy for you to drown in there. Forever disappear.  

The truth is, there isn’t any place you can see yourself living in, because you don’t want to live anywhere without Frankie. 

Only right now, the sheer thought of being despondent on another man rises bile in your stomach. You will never be that woman, ever again. 

“Here is fine,” you sigh with a pout, looking at the one-dollar store painting of the Appalachian. “Why can’t I just stay here forever?”

Completely unfit for reality. 

Adrian’s words seem to find you everywhere. They followed you all the way here, in your hiding place, plucking at the safety blanket Frankie’s care has swaddled you in. You shudder in the warm, quiet room. 

Well, fuck Adrian. Fuck your past. Fuck his words and their condemning truth. 

Step by step. That’s how you’ll proceed. You need to secure your financial situation. You need a new laptop. You need to buy underwear to replace the ones you forgot to pack. And you need food.  

You get dressed and drive to an Apple Store in town, where the price tags on the MacBooks make your eyes bulge. You’ve truly been living inside a despicably privileged bubble. Guilt makes your skin grow tight. 

After running a quick search on your phone, you find a second-hand electronic store, where you purchase a refurbished laptop for a quarter of its original price. You feel stupid for feeling so smart. After all, you’re only experiencing most people’s life. The thought helps you follow through with the rest of your errands, starting with the bank.  

When you come back to the motel with your shopping bags and some takeaway Thai, however, the problem of your immediate future remains unsolved. 

Deliberately stalling, you start fiddling with the computer. The motel doesn’t have Wi-Fi, but you manage to tether the laptop to your phone. The small victory alleviates your anxious sadness. You settle over the bed, back propped against the pillows, and watch brainless social media content as you eat. A warm breeze wafts in through the cracked-open window. This is good, you think. The life-altering decisions can wait. 

Over the next couple of days, you gravitate within a few miles radius of the motel, only going out to buy food and take short walks in the surrounding area. Exploring its vicinity in broad daylight anchors the motel in a reality you are not ready to confront. The fact that it’s always felt like an isolated island is what brought you a sense of safety in the first place. 

But being on your own is exhilarating. You can sleep in late without having to put up with the nagging beeping of an alarm-clock that’s not even yours. Choose to shower, or not, skip a meal or eat pancakes for dinner. You can watch Parks and Recreation bloopers all night long and never tune in to a financial show ever again. You can sleep with the window opened and listen to Disintegration fifty times in a row. Your newfound freedom is in every little detail. 

When Frankie comes back on Friday evening, carrying a six-pack and a takeaway bag, he finds you bare-faced in your sleeping t-shirt, sitting cross-legged on the dirty carpet, watching SNL Digital Shorts on your good-as-new computer. 

He sets the beer and the bag on the desk. An appetizing aroma fills the room. Freshly made burritos from his favorite place. 

Silently patting the space next to you, you invite him to join, but he faces away, hiding his soft smile from you. He takes off his hat, then toes off his boots, and your heart somersaults at how far you’ve come since your early rituals. 

Walking over to you, he crouches at your side to inspect the bandage on your leg, that you changed every day, per his instructions. Seemingly satisfied with your handiwork, he pivots to sit down, his knees protesting with a resounding POP that makes him grunt, and you're overcome by a powerful wave of fondness. Oblivious to the food and the videos on the screen, you unfold your legs and climb over his lap in a straddle. 

“Evening, baby,” he greets you with a round chuckle, soft as velvet, as you lean in for a greedy kiss, prompting him to open with a swipe of your tongue over his plush lips. 

He responds in kind, voracious mouth slanting over yours, tongue licking inside you. Your arms wrap around him, fingers burrowing into the plane of his strong back, the heady scent of him, leather and musk, filling your brain with static and your belly with want. His warm hands slide under your shirt, calloused palms roaming the expanse of your naked chest. He swallows your wanton moans, thumbs playing over your peaked nipples and you take, back arching into his chest, nails digging, hips rolling. 

His touch gets rougher, his hands a kneading grasp over your soft breasts, over the dip of your waist, the swell of your ass, desire pooling hot at your center as his tongue licks and twirls inside your mouth. Chasing the contact of his growing bulge, you bear down over his harsh denim, and his breathing comes in shorter, fingertips teasing the elastic band of your cotton panties. You exhale heavily through your nose, slick soaking his jeans through the soft fabric. 

His lips curve into a grin, thick fingers sliding under your panty-line. He presses into the dip underneath your hips to part your leaking folds with an explicit sound. You push harder into him, into the wall of his chest, forcing him to lean back, your need coiled like a wound spring, angling his face with a harsh tug on his curls to catch his lower lip between your teeth.

“Fuck, okay,” he growls, straightening up with a cinch. 

His fingers clutch the swell of your ass and in one swift motion, the room around you swivels, you’re on your back, legs bracketing his waist. 

As he unbuckles his belt, your gaze follows the rippling of his lean muscles along his forearms to the shifting bulk of his biceps, lingering on the round of his shoulders and his corded neck, up to his gorgeous face. Tousled hair, kiss-swollen lips, cherry-red, curved in a boyish grin. Black, lust-blown pupils that watch you watch him. 

A clear laughter rises from your chest and bubbles in your throat, its music beautiful to your ears, almost alien, long forgotten. 

His grin widens, dimpling his face, and he tugs off his shirt, throwing it at random in the room behind him. Your laughter dies in your throat; it steals your breath away, it always does, the sight of his naked chest, towering over you, gleaming golden in the soft hues from the bedside lamps. The dips and planes, the pattern of his freckles, the scars you could trace with eyes closed. The stories they tell, your precious secrets, your treasured knowledge.

A flat press of his palms over your knees, and he spreads your legs open, exposing the wet patch on your underwear to his gaze, and his smile falls, his expression turning wilder, dark and hungry. 

“Fucking soaking wet,” he husks, chucking down his jeans, pulling out his stiff length from his boxer briefs, and you squirm over the rough rug with a pleading whimper. Spiting in his hand, he starts stroking himself, eyes trained on your core, deft fingers loosely circling his cock in a slow up-and-down motion. Saliva pools in your mouth, you clench around nothing. 

“What’s that t-shirt?” he asks, bending closer to you, slotting his cock between your folds over the slick-drenched fabric of your panties.

“Oh god,” you gasp. “That– what?” 

“That t-shirt you’re wearing.”

You can feel the throbbing weight of his sex, feel its heat as it rubs back and forth over your swollen clit, and your mind scrambles.

“From– from college.”

“You’re gonna keep it on,” he tells you, his left hand finding your breast and giving it a tight squeeze through the worn-out material. “You look so young, it’s like I’m fucking you in your dorm.”

The fat head of his cock nudges at your entrance, pushing the soaked fabric in, and your mouth falls open, hips arching into him.

“Like I knew you back then. Like I’ve always known you,” he rasps after a thick swallow. “Like a second chance. You know?”

“I know,” you mouthe with a short nod. 

Hooking the tip of his finger, he slides your panties aside, just enough to line himself up, slowly inching inside your heat with a strained groan. 

“Shit, baby, you’re tight.”

The stretch is impossible, the size of him blinding, and you hiss and squirm, but his hold on your waist is bruising, keeping you in place as he thrusts inside you inch by inch, thick cock catching at your entrance. 

There’s the working of his throat as he gathers saliva in his mouth, and he locks eyes with you, making sure you’re watching, before he lets it slide along his tongue straight onto your cunt. The rough carpet scraps your ass as you writhe against his restraint, against the terrifying notion that he always knows just what it is that you want, that he always makes sure you get it. 

“You wanted it, now you gotta take it. You’re gonna take it like a good girl.”

“Yes, Frankie,” you breathe out, nodding again, surrendering, bucking your hips into him.

“Oh yea, good girl, that’s it,” he coos. “Gonna stretch that pretty little cunt on my cock, until you come all over it,” he says, moving inside you, “until you beg me to stop–”

“I’ll never beg you to stop,” you breathe out, brows furrowed, sweat beading at your temples as you take his first shallow, labored strokes.

“Wanna bet?” he asks, drawing your legs over his lap with a sudden tug, deepening his thrusts at a blinding angle. 

You thrash your head, back arching off the carpet, a guttural sound vibrating in your throat as he starts fucking into you at a steady pace, his cock dragging along your walls, leaving you no choice but to accommodate his girth. 

With a small grunt, he thrusts in deeper, the round head of his cock grinding against your center and your fingers scrabble frantically, flying to his chest and clawing at the meat of his muscles.

“That perfect fucking cunt,” he says, eyes trained on where he disappears into you, “you feel so fucking good, Lee. You’re so beautiful. Say it.”

“I’m beautiful,” you say in a warped voice.

“You’re fucking perfect. Say it, Lee,” he husks, drilling inside you faster, with undiluted strength, clutching your waist and sliding you over his cock so you meet him thrust for thrust. 

“Oh god, Frankie,” you beg, after all, taking hold of his wrists, a desperate attempt to slow down his merciless pace. 

Leaning forward, he covers you with his broad frame, crushing you into the rug, spine undulating as he thoroughly wrecks you, unrelenting, his speed escalating.

The heady musk of his scent fills your nostrils, so thick you can taste it. His hot breath scalds the shell of your ear, brutal shockwaves radiating from your center with each of his strokes, each of his words.

“Be a good girl, and say it,” he pants, “say you’re perfect.”

—

You’re mine, Lee Abbott. 

Celadon green, and a pale shade of yellow. He knows your scent will haunt him long after you’ve left him. You’re a part of him now. He made you so. You’ll forever be woven into his flesh, into his very soul. 

You’re mine. Lee Abbott.

He never speaks those words out loud. He’ll sooner die than compromise or be a hindrance to your newfound independence. 

But god, you’re his. Your entire body bears the mark of his desperate plea. Bite marks on the swell of your hips, the round of your ass, the curve of your neck. Heart shaped flecks of crimson, blossoming underneath the surface of your thin skin along the line of your throat, your collarbone, and the weight of your tits.

Every night, he covers you in his sweat and his spit, before he fills you up with his come. 

I love you, he said instead, that first night, and you never replied. In a few days, you’ll be gone, and it might very well kill him, but he will let you go. 

And maybe, from the start, he was more yours than you ever were his. A part of him knew it. The part that tried resisting your pull. The part that compelled him to run away from you that very first night.

Two weeks. Two weeks, and you’ll go north. Live with your sister in New York. Start over. 

There was this talk, over cold burritos and warm beer. He ate with reluctance, desirous to keep your taste on his tongue. Forever preserve the flavor of your orgasm that he lapped from your folds.

That talk that tore his bleeding heart right out of his chest, when you hinted you might have to leave town. You couldn’t explain, you said. Couldn’t make sense of it. You said, I just want to stay here in this room, with you. I don’t want anything to change. 

But it made sense to him. You had to leave, put physical distance between yourself and those who’d wounded you continuously throughout the years, so you could rebuild your life, rebuild yourself. And you needed to be on your own to do this the right way. Once more, he reveled in your courage. He admired your strength. 

He hadn’t measured the extent of his hatred for this man until you pronounced his name. Adrian. Your fiancé. This shit stain. Ever since you broke free, he’s had violent dreams about him. A faceless, lanky silhouette, he beats him to a pulp until his knuckles burst over the man’s skull. He wakes up feeling blood spilling warm and gooey between his fingers.

The local newspapers continue to allude to your departure from your father’s company. Short, carefully redacted articles downplaying the event with meticulously curated talking points. Typical PR damage control bullshit. 

He looks them up, and never mentions them, of course, but every so often, when he arrives from work, he finds you hunched over your laptop, brow furrowed, bloodshot eyes. Quickly shutting the computer close as soon as he approaches. You’re preparing the after, you say. Scouting for jobs, apartments, and once more, he chooses to believe you. 

But then, you cry at night. Silently heaving next to him, your face buried into the pillow to muffle the sound of your heavy sobbing. He pulls you into him, into his chest, wrapping his body around your shaking frame. Chin tucked over the crown of your head. Humming into your hair. You seem so frail, so vulnerable in his hold, and he wishes to absorb your loss, annihilate the pain, rip it from you and make it disappear. 

I got you, Lee. Don’t be afraid, you’ll get through this. 

Can you hear him, then? Do you believe his words of reassurance? You fall asleep with your hands clutching his shoulders, exhausted, the wrong kind of spent. 

You need to go. And he’ll let you leave. Your needs are his needs. They dictate his life. He’ll be right here, waiting for you on the other side.

He said, This never ends, and he meant every word.

But the fucking pain. 

Constantly ripping through his chest, it’s in everything he does, tainting your last days together. In every look at your gorgeous face, in every kiss, every stroke, every embrace. It’s there when he marvels at the graceful ways in which you move, at your recovering appetite, at your patience with him when you let him dress your wound that’s long healed. 

It’s in the blissful domestic routine you two have so naturally fallen into. It’s in his every thought, at work, with his kid, with you. When he comes to you at night, in this shithole that feels more like home than his new house does.  

And whenever he opens his mouth, he fears he’ll betray himself. The words are always there, in the back of his throat, ready to pour out of him. I want you to meet my daughter. I want you to move in with me. I’ll provide for you. You can be whoever you want. Stay. Stay with me. 

You’re mine, Lee.  

Two weeks isn’t enough. Two lifetimes wouldn’t be. 

—

The small cantina is crammed, swarming with boisterous kids and their harassed parents. A continuous clamor hangs over you like a lead lid, you don’t think you’d be able to hear your own voice if you were able to speak. 

Frankie’s head is dipped, his face half concealed behind the brim of his trucker hat, his broad frame hunched over his tray. He hasn’t touched much of his food, and you have yet to start on yours. When you left the motel, a quick lunch had sounded like a good idea. A welcome distraction from the impending separation. 

Now, it feels like moving through a bad dream, like running away in slow motion from an ineluctable disaster.

Inside your palm lingers the ghost sensation of the room’s keychain. You balled your fist around it before checking out at the reception. You raked your brain for an excuse to keep it, and found none. 

Two weeks ago, you’d thought leaving was the right thing to do. He said he understood your decision. He said, I’ll wait for you. 

And when you booked the flight, the date, however close, seemed surreal. Somewhere in the distant future, intangible. As the day drew near, you did what you do best. You refused to acknowledge the reality of it, eluding the prospect, reasoning with yourself that you were merely preserving your last moments with Frankie. 

Now, the take-off only a couple of hours away, your luggage stored in the truck’s tailgate, you can’t shake the feeling that this is a terrible mistake. You don’t care about rebuilding your life. You don’t give a damn about having a job, about emancipating, about being an independent woman. You want to build a home with him. You want to become his wife, to raise his daughter. You want to be his forever. 

You’re going to be sick, is what’s going to happen. 

“Should we go?”

You meet his shadowed eyes, fighting the tears that fill up yours, and nod in agreement. 

Outside the cantina, the heat hits you like a brick wall. Thoughts rush to your head, about the New York winters, the harsh, icy winds, the snow. The clothes you’ll have to buy. Wool sweaters, boots, a coat. Familiarize yourself with the subway. Those dark, underground tunnels. The ramifications of what this new life entails are overwhelming. 

You look up at Frankie and there is no cold hard stare. Only his soft sad eyes, and the gentle caress of their mahogany light, and the pleading arch of his brow. You’re hanging off a cliff, suspended over the abyss, grasping at the dirt, like the wild creature in your rib cage, trying to claw its way out and back to him, where it belongs. Where you belong. 

Nothing makes sense anymore.

“Okay, I’ll call a cab,” you say into your bag, looking for your phone, heart thumping in your throat, tears prickling your nose.

Frankie sighs, a constrained, pained rasp of a breath. He props his hands on his hips, cocking his leg to the side, and the heel of his boot scuffs over the asphalt. 

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the airport?”

The swelling lump in the back of your throat won’t let you talk, so you shake your head no. 

“I can drive you all the way there, if you want. New York, I mean. We could… we could make a detour. Through the Appalachian. See that ugly painting in the real.”

His attempt at a cocky smile fails to reach his eyes. 

A first tear spills out from the corner of your eyes. A fat, angry droplet that rolls down your cheek to hang on the edge of your jaw. 

“Hey now, don’t cry. C’mere.”  

Your bag falls to the floor when you crash into the solid warmth of his chest. Winding his strong arms around you, he cups the back of your head in a gentle, careful cradle, lifting you up in his hold.

His cap falls to the ground when you thread your fingers through his hair. You burrow into his neck, into him. You want to live inside his body, meld with his bloodstream, wrap around his heart, become his heartbeat. 

He breathes you in, the plush press of his lips a warm caress on your temple, and more tears flow out of you.

“I wish you could come with me.”

“I know, baby. I wish I could come with you.”

“I would—” you start with a sob, “I would love her like a mother. I could. I know I could.”

“I know you would. Of course, you would. Hey, look at me,” he says, putting you down and pulling away just a notch, cupping your wet face with both hands. “This is not over. It can never be over. It’s just the beginning. The beginning of something different.”

Eyes fluttering shut, you tilt your head to the side, his calloused palm grazing your cheek, to place a kiss on the inside of his wrist. Over the small tattoo you never got a chance to ask him about. You inhale him there, musk, leather, safety. You let your head rest between his hands, the same way you placed your life between his lips, many months ago.

“Frankie, I need to ask you something.”

“Anything.”

“Why… That very first night, in the bar. Why did you turn around? What made you look at me?”

His face falls. The crease in his brow deepens as he visibly ponders over his answer. The sun backlights his curls with a golden halo. When he speaks, his voice is a low rasp, a round aching husk. 

“I’d been searching for you for a long time.”

He thumbs away a stray tear from the apple of your cheek; he scratches his throat. 

“Call me when you get to the airport, okay? And when you board. And when you land. Okay?”

A wistful smile lifts the corner of your lips. Looking at him through hanging tears, you say, “I just realized we’ve never ever talked on the phone.”

Frankie breathes in deep, his smile mirroring yours. So beautiful, so strong. So soft. Yours.  

“See, baby? We got so many things to look forward to. It’s just the beginning.” 

*****

Thank you so much for reading and for your patience 🧡 I hope you liked it. Remember, there's still an epilogue. It will be shorter, so it shouldn't take me too long to birth it, if my brain cooperates 🤞🏻

[tintinn16]

PEDRO PASCAL as REED RICHARDS Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

[tintinn16]

PEDRO PASCAL ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA ON FEBRUARY 4, 2025

[tintinn16]

FRANCISCO MORALES | TRIPLE FRONTIER

requested by @berryispunk

[tintinn16]

golden kisses (dave york x f!reader)

summary: newly single, dave finds comfort in life’s simple pleasures; among other things.

warnings: short & sweet, unspecified but legal age gap, cursing, food, alcohol, pedro’s insane coffee order, fluff, mentions of divorce, kissing & touching, suggestive smut, soft!dave.. possessive!dave (obsessed!dave actually), 18+ mdni.

notes: this is my submission to jana & daphne’s writing through the seasons challenge. i asked to write for dave york in the fall, and was given this beautiful moodboard and the prompt ‘next time i see you, we’re going to kiss for a very long time.’

to @guiltyasdave & @sizzlingcloudmentality — thank you for organising something so wonderful! jana, tysm for giving me the opportunity to get to know your man & write for him for the first time. i hope you like him, and happy birthday! <3

Simple Pleasures.

The optimistic name of the coffee shop that Dave began to frequent, and coincidentally something his coworkers had encouraged him to indulge in in the wake of his divorce.

You just forget sometimes, York. All you gotta do is take time for life’s simple pleasures, and things’ll get easier.

Easier? He’d scoffed. Sure.

The separation had been straightforward enough. Carol had felt he loved his job more than her, and he supposed — in the end — that she was right. She got the house, got the girls full-time. Dave found an apartment in the city, saw his daughters every other weekend. A clean break, with minimal disruption for the children.

He struggled with the change at first.

The York home had been warm and inviting: tiny sneakers strewn across the hallways, half-empty bags of grapes littering the countertops, Barbie doll heads and plastic unicorns worming their way inside his suit jackets. In contrast, Dave’s new living space was devoid of all life; high up in the clouds, any speck of glitter or fairy dust soon smoothed away by the cleaners.

Simple Pleasures was an independent coffee house, placed conveniently enough on his new route to the office downtown. It meant Dave was spending a stupid amount on caffeine, but he couldn’t quite find it in him to make it freshly brewed at the apartment — somewhere he still couldn’t bring himself to call home.

You were the first thing he noticed when he visited, and the reason he kept going back.

Dave found himself leaving for work a little earlier each day, securing a spot by the window in the summer sunshine. He had no real reason to stop, could get his order in a takeout cup just like every other glum-faced professional in the establishment.

But he didn’t.

He sat and he watched; the way your dainty gold bracelets sparkled in the morning light, the sheen of clear gloss across your full lips, how your face split into a smile when you greeted your regulars. You were younger than him, full of an enthusiasm he could barely remember from his twenties. Slivers of vitality shone in every move you made, practiced and careful in everything you did.

Dave savoured every interaction he had with you; replayed them in his mind at his desk, in the shower, in his bed. He would lie awake most nights, counting down every minute ‘til sunrise. The stress of work commitments and his depressing home life would fall to the wayside the moment he stepped up to the counter to see you. He waited eagerly for the touch of your manicured hand against his, the fluttered lashes, the gentle teasing.

Six shots of espresso over ice, Mr York. I sure hope you’re getting enough sleep.

///

“You wanna go away this weekend?”

Dave feels your body stir as he leans over, lips trailing across your shoulder blade. His hand finds the curve of your hip, dragging his thumb against the soft skin there. It’s early morning; your panties in a heap by the bedroom door, red marks from your nails fading across his back.

You turn to face him, blinking sleepily. “With you?”

“Yeah, pretty girl. With me.”

Dave looms over you, watching you pretend to think it over. He’s memorised every feature: the way your nose scrunches when you laugh, the colour of your eyes when the light hits them just right, the way your teeth sink into your lower lip when you’re anxious — or aroused.

“Where are you taking me?” you ask, eyebrow arching.

“It’s a surprise,” he tells you. “Pack warm clothes, though. And that blue lace you wore on Tuesday.”

Eyes narrowing, you loop your arms round his neck. Dave takes the opportunity to kiss you, tongue sliding into your warm, wet mouth. He groans at the taste of you, breaking apart when you start to giggle.

“Yes, sir.”

You’ve been his for almost three months: eighty-five days, to be precise. Dave is always precise, finding that hidden spot inside you every time he makes you come, knowing when to push you further, and when to hold you close. He knows your limits, respects your boundaries, gives you as much as you can take — even though you always ask for more.

“Y’know, you’re lucky I wasn’t give any shifts for this weekend,” you reprimand him gently a moment later, soft hands sliding against his back.

Dave smirks, bending his head as his nose drags along your jaw. “And why do you think that is?”

“You did not!”

“Baby, I spend enough money in that damned coffee shop to call in a couple favours,” he chuckles, grazing his teeth against your throat.

Summer had slowly given way to fall, the leaves turning gold on the trees; Dave fucking and falling in love with you as they began to drop to the ground.

///

The cabin was awarded to Dave in the divorce settlement. Smooth pine and modern furnishings, sitting prettily on a lake nobody else knew how to find — he’d made sure of that.

“This is all yours?!” you exclaim happily, wandering over to the stone fireplace. You’ve been twisting your hands round your scarf excitedly, darting from room to room, listing off excursions and activities for the two of you to try.

Dave lets himself be swept away by your enthusiasm, even if it does derail his plans to keep you naked for as long as possible. He wraps his arms round your waist, pressing his lips below the shell of your ear. “Ours, until Sunday night.”

You turn to kiss him, tugging a little at his hair in the way you know he likes. He often searches for the words to tell you the warmth you’ve brought into his life, and fails miserably, resolving to show you instead. Dave’s hands wander under your shirt, feeling himself stirring as your tongue slips so deliciously into his mouth.

“We need to make some dinner plans,” you remind him breathlessly a moment later, sandwiched between the back of the couch and the hard, insistent press of his groin. “Go for it,” he mutters, slowly dropping to his knees. He makes quick work of your jeans, kissing the soft inside of your thighs as you quiver above him.

“My meal’s right here.”

///

You do manage to drag him out of bed.

Occasionally.

You sip coffee in his lap on the front porch, sweetly forcing Dave to cut his espresso shots down to three. He watches you pouting, expressing concerns over his health, knowing he’d never deny you anything. He lets you plan the hiking route, pull a beanie hat over his head as you set off into the sea of red and yellow trees, hand-in-hand.

“Would you ever leave the city behind? Move out here permanently?” you ask, pausing to take in the views. Dave only has eyes for you; the way the sweater you’d stolen from him moulds to your body perfectly, your chest rising and falling with exertion, a look of wonder painted adoringly across your beautiful face.

“Not without you,” he replies truthfully, pulling you close.

Two deer move across the meadow below, never straying far from one another amidst the golden haze of the weak sunlight. You lean into him, watching the animals together wordlessly. Dave feels a level of contentment wash over him — here, with you, somewhere so peaceful.

Later on, after some simple mac and cheese and a couple of glasses of red wine, Dave takes you on the rug by the fire. He watches your eyes roll to the back of your skull; gripping his biceps, ankles locked over his lower back. I love you, he confesses breathily as he sinks in deeper. You respond in kind, his hand gentle over your throat, pushing you over the edge of bliss with Dave following soon after.

///

All too soon, Sunday evening arrives.

The drive home is quiet: Dave’s travelling out of state for work for two weeks, the impending separation already swirling round his mind torturously. He’s addicted to you: the scent you leave on his clothes, the soft bite marks on his shoulders, the way your smaller hand fits perfectly in his large one.

“‘m gonna miss you,” you say softly, leaning over the console to splay your fingers across his thigh. “I’ll come over, soon as I’m back,” Dave soothes, moving your hand to press his lips to your knuckles. Eighty-seven days have now passed since you first agreed to go on a date with him, and already he’s considering a browse at Tiffany’s, seeing if he can find something to make you his forever.

You sigh happily. “Well, the next time I see you, I’m not letting go.”

“Oh, yeah? What do you have planned?”

You grin, as vibrant as the myriad of beautiful fall colours outside the window, as full as you’ve made his life since coming into it.

“Let’s just say we’re going to kiss for a very long time.”

[tintinn16]

Teething

dbf!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Joel was crowned as The Trusted Adult to accompany you to your wisdom teeth extraction appointment. Chaos ensued.

Tags: no outbreak, age gap, most likely exaggerated effects of sedation, sexual themes

Word count: 3.1k

The skies were painted with shades of copper and lilac when you arrived home. A familiar pickup truck was parked in the driveway next to your dad’s own F-150, and you slipped your way through the narrow passage between the two to get to the backyard through the narrow side alley of your house, sticking twigs of overgrown shrub brushing against your arm.

Laughter bounced against the pillars supporting rusting canopy adorned with vines and wildflowers, echoing around the tiny dining area. Around the table were three men you could discern blindfolded: your dad and his friends, Joel and Tommy Miller. The three looked pretty scruffy, which made sense since they most likely just got out of work before they decided to have some beer and smoked ham time at your house. As usual.

Tommy made a comment about a boat and your dad and Joel burst out laughing again, almost shaking the earth with the lethal combination of old men’s simplistic jokes and immense vocal cords abilities.

They hardly noticed your presence until you put both hands on your dad’s shoulders, kissing the top of his head. He smelled like barbecue smoke.

“What’s so funny?” you grin. Joel greeted you with a polite nod, while Tommy put down his beer can to wave at you. “Hi Joel, hi Tommy.”

“Sweetheart!” your dad slightly twisted his torso to meet your gaze. “Tommy was telling us about his recent fishing trip. How was today?”

“Okay-ish,” you patted his shoulders once more before letting go and starting to make your way towards the backdoor, leaving the men to their fishing jokes again. “Have fun, guys.”

“Oh, before I forget!” your dad clapped. “I am so sorry, but I won’t be able to take you to the dentist this Thursday. They want me in San Antonio to overlook—”

“Daaad,” you groaned, although your face showed nothing akin to annoyance, just sorry. “I’ll see if my friend can take me.” you tried to comfort him, even though knowing your friends, you’d have a bigger chance of losing your teeth in a car crash than in the operating room.

“What’s happenin’?” Tommy furrowed his brows. “You okay?”

“I’m having my wisdom teeth removed,” you pointed at your cheek, the approximate area where the third molar of your upper right side of jaw was growing sideways. “One popped out and it’s growing weirdly, so I got an x-ray and it turned out all four of them are developing in such shitty positions, so, they’re taking them all out.”

“All at once?!” Tommy gasped, to which you nodded as you purse your lips.

“More cost-effective, or whatever.”

“Ouch.”

“I’ll take her,” all eyes went to the source of the voice: Joel. He was staring directly at your dad. “I’m free Thursday.”

“‘Ppreciate that, man, but—”

“Really?” you beamed, prancing your way towards his seat and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Joel!”

The man raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat while Tommy laughed. Your dad shook his head slowly at your endearing antics, his eyes meeting Joel’s as they silently said ‘Thank you, and sorry’.

The next time Joel’s gray Ranger pulled up in front of your house, you had been waiting on the porch with a smile worthy enough to be on a billboard advertising toothpaste.

.

The fog in your head started to clear just enough to let you notice the figure sitting by your side. Joel’s broad shoulders took up half the room—or at least it felt that way in your dazed state. His arms were crossed, and his brows furrowed as he watched you with what looked like mild concern. You blinked a few times, your vision wobbling like you were looking through a fishbowl. You couldn’t really register where you were or how you ended up here yet.

“Hey,” he straightened his posture up the second he realized you were awake.

“Whoa,” you slurred, pointing a wobbly finger at him. “You look good.”

Because he did. That was the first thing you noticed about him. You couldn’t remember if it was exactly true, but a voice in your head told you that Joel always looked good. You believed it. And he did right now, with clothes all ironed, beard trimmed, hair combed. Joel wouldn’t admit it, but he’d even put some styling powder on his hair today.

His lips twitched, and he scratched at his beard, unsure of the appropriate response to give. “Uh, thanks. How are you feeling?”  

You ignored the question. “Does my dad know you’re here?”  

“Yeah,” he said slowly, leaning closer. “He was there when I said I’d take you here, remember?”  

“No.” You deadpanned, voice thick and blunt. Your tongue scraped against your gum, and it touched some soft, fibery, wet cotton balls. You almost gagged.

Joel sighed. “Alright. Uh, pain anywhere? Are you comfortable?”  

You tilted your head, as if trying to access some hidden inner truth. Then, with startling conviction, you announced, “Sweaty.”

He quickly raised from his seat, reaching for a handkerchief in his pocket to wipe your forehead with when you suddenly choked into tears. You could barely get the words out through the swollen jaw, numb tongue, and spiky throat. “I miss my daddy…”

You felt like the saddest child in the world. You didn’t know where your dad was, but most importantly, your brain wasn’t able to assess where he might be. But he wasn’t here. And that alone was enough to send you spiraling into agony.

Joel looked around awkwardly, clearly out of his depth. “Sweetie,” he said, reaching out to pat your cheek gently. “I’m here.”

You blinked up at him with wide, glassy eyes, your bottom lip trembling. “Where is he? Did he sell me to you?”  

“What?” if only you were sober enough to see the expression on his face. 

Tears continued to pool in your eyes, spilling down your cheeks. “What am I supposed to do, being sold to a person like you?”  

“Person like me—What’s that supposed to mean,” Joel withdrew, seemingly offended momentarily before he realized he was talking to a group of at most six brain cells, half of them blackout drunk.

“Hot,” you sniffled. “Hot like you.”

Joel freezed. His jaw worked soundlessly for a moment before he muttered, “O…kay. Uh, let’s call for a nurse, okay?” He stood up and looked toward the hallway.

“I don’t even know how to be a housewife!” you lamented, gesturing wildly toward a painting of sand dunes on the wall. “You’re going to dump me in the middle of a desert!”  

“Honey,” Joel said, his voice strained but calm. “Nobody is dumping or selling anybody, okay? Just—wait here. I’m gonna go get a nurse. I’ll only be gone for, like, five seconds.”  

You watched him disappear behind the wall, your lips quivering as you began counting on your fingers. “One… two… three… four… five…” You looked up at the hallway, waiting for Joel to come back as you realized how alone you were in the room. You didn’t want to be alone. The fluorescent light was hurting your eyes and the air smelled like a dentist’s office. You were in one, but you didn’t really register that. Panic set in like a tidal wave. “Joel?” 

“Joel! JOEL!” You thrashed in the chair, trying to swing your legs over to touch the ground, ready to bolt after him like some kind of lovesick lunatic. It was hard, like you were learning controls for a video game for the first time, and your limbs didn’t move the way you wanted them to. Joel returned with a nurse moments after. She was holding a clipboard and if not for the mask hiding her expression, Joel would have seen that she was wearing a smile that looked dangerously close to a laugh.

“You’re back! I thought you were leaving me…” your voice cracked as you reached out toward Joel with snot running freely down your upper lip. “I’ll be a good wife from now on, Joel, I promise.”  

“Oh,” the nurse said sweetly. “Sounds like someone’s still a little loopy.”  

Joel ran a hand over his face, mortified. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s alright,” she smiled at him before checking on you. “Definitely not the worst I’ve witnessed. You’ll be okay, won’t you, sweetheart?”

You nodded.

She asked you to open your mouth, and you attempted to talk to Joel the entirety of it, moving your heavy tongue around, making barely coherent noises. At one point you reached for his hand and he took it.

“Hoew, wa ho hayhee hee hahee?” which would translate to ‘Joel, was our wedding in Bali?’, like Joel would’ve been able to decipher it. He just played along in hopes to shut you up.

“Yes, yes, of course.” he cupped your hand in his.

“Okay, now bite down with pressure, okay?” the nurse said softly after pulling the blood-soaked cotton balls out and replacing them with new ones. You did as she said. “That’s good. Thank you.”

“No, thank you.” you smiled at her. “You’re so nice.”

“And you’re so nice, too.” she said as she gathered her clipboard and metal tray. “We’re all clear here, you are free to go home. If you prefer to wait out until she’s not so disoriented anymore, please use our waiting room since we have to clean this one before the next patient.”

“Thank you.” Joel nodded politely at her.

“Any more questions you’d like to ask the doctor?”

“I think we’re all covered. Thank you for everything. Let’s go, sweetie.” he helped you stand up, and the second he let go your body leaned, craving to touch the floor. Both him and the nurse reached out to you, crashing their heads in the process.

“Ow!” she yelped.

“Sorry, sorry. I got her. I’m really sorry.” he slightly bowed down as he held you steady, one palm planted on your ribs just below your breasts.

“Sorry,” you parroted, utterly oblivious to what just happened.

“It’s alright,” she laughed lightheartedly as she reached down to fix your shoelaces. “There you go.”

“Thank you again. We’ll stay out of your hair now.”

.

After what felt like eighty years, Joel finally got you on the passenger seat. He could feel his lifespan shortened significantly, and his back hurt so much trying to crouch to your level as he guided you across the parking lot. He should’ve just carried you—would’ve been much quicker and better for everyone involved.

You touched the dashboard, feeling the texture underneath your fingers like it was the first time you got in a car. Joel closed the door next to you and scurried his way around the car hood to the driver’s side, sighing when he got in.

“Joel, what’s your favorite pie?” you asked as he leaned over to put your seatbelt on, hand fiddling with the belt when it got stuck and you instinctively ran your fingers through his hair. 

“Pecan,” he muttered, body getting tense under your casual yet intimate touch.

“Oh, I had pecan pie at my house recently.” you withdrew your fingers as Joel straightened up and put his own seatbelt on. “We’re like, soulmates, or something.”

Joel started the car. “Yes, that was me. I brought the pie to your house.”

“Wow, you’re so kind.” you smiled, eyes tearing up, as if bringing you pie was the equivalent of saving all kittens in the world. Joel rolled his eyes and shifted the gear from neutral, and the two of you slowly moved out of the office parking lot to the road.

You cupped your own swelled cheeks, feeling the spherical cotton balls nested between your jaws. “I don’t like these, Joel.”

“Yeah? Wanna take them out? Do you think the bleeding has stopped?” his eyes ran between you and the road in front of him back and forth, getting ready to merge onto the highway.

“My mouth is so full,” you whined, and you fished one cotton ball out, all wet and slightly red, before rolling the window down and throwing it out. It bounced on the dry concrete behind you briefly before it got run over by another car.

“Hey, no littering! And keep your arm inside, my fucking god, d’ya wanna lose it?” Joel yelled, one arm leaving the steering wheel to pull your hand into the car and close the window back up, almost taking up the lane next to you. A semi-truck passed through and the driver honked their horn, deafening. You snarled at it while Joel mouthed a quiet ‘fuck’.

“I still got more inside,” you pointed at your open mouth, like Joel couldn’t tell from your slightly muffled voice still.

“I know, but either keep it in your mouth until we get home, or find some—I don’t know, plastic bag to keep it in, alright? Try the glove box.” he points at the compartment in front of you. You fiddled with the handle, and when it opened it revealed a little toolbox, a pocket knife, a folded map, and two dusty condoms from God knows when.

“Joel, what is this?” you pinched one out for Joel to see, voice thick with betrayal. “You’re cheating on me.”

Good fucking god. Joel snatched the thing out of your hand, shoving it back into the glove box before slamming it closed. He shouldn’t have been panicking like you were actually his bride and he’d been two-timing you after work, because you weren’t, and the only thing that had been in touch with his dick in the past six months was his fist. “I don’t know how it got there. It’s from a while ago.”

But the damage had been done. You covered your face with your hands, eventually took the remaining cotton balls out and let them go onto the floor mats. Joel winced.

“What should I do? Is my blowjob not good enough?”

Joel was the most uncomfortable he had ever been his whole life right now, and he once witnessed his friends’ parents hitting it crazy style with the same banana pudding that was served at dinner smeared everywhere when he was there for a sleepover, so that was saying a lot.

“You have never—what are you fuckin’ doing?!”

You had leaned over as much as your seatbelt allowed you to, fingers reaching to unbuckle his belt. “I’m gonna show you how good I c—”

Joel lost control of the steering wheel as he tried to shoo you away, but you latched your palm around his bulge like leech. He accidentally turned the truck too much to the left, switching lanes without warning, and abruptly hit the brakes for a split second when he thought he was going to crash into a Camaro, almost slamming you forward if not for the seatbelt. Three cars honked at the two of you as they passed, one was generous enough to give you the finger.

He pushed you back to your seat, both of you huffing and puffing. There was silence for about thirty seconds until Joel composed himself.

“What the fuck did they put you under, because I need some,” he muttered under his breath before speaking clearer. “Put your hands on the dashboard. Now,” he commanded, eyes flicking between you and the road.

“Why?” you mumbled, your fingers twitching like they might reach for Joel’s belt again.

“Because I said so,” Joel grunted, shifting in his seat to try to hide his hardening length, jaw tense as he kept one hand firmly on the wheel. “You wanna be a good wife, don’t you?”

You blinked slowly. Joel was right, you wanted to be a good wife.

“Yeah,” Joel continued, eyes narrowing slightly, still focused on the road. “Only good wives put their hands on the dashboard.”

“Really?” you laughed, the sound drifting lazily out of you. But you planted both palms on the dashboard anyway, sunlight pouring on the back of your hands, warming them up. 

“Yeah—yeah,” he muttered. “Look it up.”

“I can’t, my hands are on the dashboard,” you frowned, chin pointing towards your splayed fingers.

Joel rolled his eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh. “You just have to believe me, then.”

You thought of it for a second before nodding. “Okay. I believe you.” 

He glanced at you, eyebrows lifting. “You should. You’re my wife.”

Your head tilted, a lazy grin spreading across your face as you processed the words. You’re my wife. Somehow that was the most beautiful string of words you had ever heard. “Am I a good wife?”

“Sure. You got your hands on the dashboard. Guess that makes you a good wife,” Joel said. Your loopy grin was infectious despite his best efforts to stay stoic.

“I’m a good wife,” you repeated to yourself, beaming.

There was a beat of silence before you leaned slightly toward him, eyes bright, head swaying with the motion of the truck. “Are you a good husband?”

Joel’s grip on the steering wheel tightened for a split second, his gaze flicking to the side, then back to the road. “...I don’t know. Do you think I’m a good husband?”

“Yeah,” you said immediately, so sure of yourself as you gathered the evidence in your hazy brain. “You took me to the dentist. You got me pecan pie.”

Joel scoffed, his hands tightening on the wheel. “Driving and pies, guess that’s the key to a successful marriage.”

.

By dinner time you were already out of your groggy state, although the pain started to creep back in despite the painkillers that you just sat in the living room with a frozen pouch of CapriSun pressed against your cheek. Joel hadn’t said much but he did stay until your dad got home.

He had hoped you blacked out and didn’t remember anything from earlier. He wasn’t sure if he could live knowing you were able to remember that you were so eager to put your mouth on him, on top of you calling yourself his wife, on top of you casually admitting you found him hot.

And because he got hard in the car. He didn’t know if you saw it but for his own peace he would like to believe that you didn’t.

Joel was a little bit grateful that Tommy wasn’t there because he would never let this die.

He would never let this die himself.

When your dad set some burritos for Joel and applesauce for you on the counter, Joel was ready to go home and get drunk while pondering in the shower.

“You’re leaving already?” you licked the applesauce, tasting it innocently, and Joel had to remind himself that licking applesauce was not a sexually enticing act.

“Yeah, working early tomorrow. Get well soon.” he stood awkwardly as he pocketed his keys.

“Thanks a lot, man,” your dad got up to give Joel a hug with his back facing away from you, and you stared Joel dead in the eyes as you mouthed playfully: ‘Husband.’

His lips twitched. Seemed like he would never know peace ever again.

[tintinn16]

Erotic Postcards. Circa 1920

[tintinn16]

it’s safe to assume that at any given moment i want to go back to bed

[tintinn16]

I cannot believe there's absolutely no way to watch free shows and movies anymore, there are too many paid streaming platforms and pirating websites have viruses and ads preventing you from watching it uninterrupted((.)) id rather follow the rules and purchase media moving forward because it is too inconvenient. Seriously, free and no ads or viruses with 1080p streaming is DEAD.

[tintinn16]

an episode of hannibal where someone wears crocs to one of his dinner parties and he completely loses his shit

[tintinn16]

These men just stole the personal information of everyone in America AND control the Treasury. Link to article.

Akash Bobba

Edward Coristine

Luke Farritor

Gautier Cole Killian

Gavin Kliger

Ethan Shaotran

Spread their names!

[tintinn16]

𝐏𝐄𝐃𝐑𝐎 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐋 as 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐔𝐒 𝐀𝐂𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐔𝐒

Gladiator II (2024). Acacius' black armor with red tunic.

[tintinn16]

Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (2025) dir. Matt Shakman